Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records
FYI, I have previously posted a bit of information on cleaning, and I have now complied that and much more into a paper titled “Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records”. Bill Hart of The Vinyl Press https://thevinylpress.com/ who has a keen interest in cleaning vinyl records is hosting the paper. He has written an article on the paper that captures it better than I could, and a link to the article that has the free-download load option for the paper (85 pages) is here: https://thevinylpress.com/precision-aqueous-cleaning-of-vinyl-records/ . If you have not been to his site, check-it out, there is a lot of good info, and its well written. While at his site, check out the about-tab and then scroll down and click on System-Notes-Austin-2017. He has a pretty impressive system and near the end shows quite a ‘cleaning station’; using both a Keith Monks vacuum-RCM and KL Audio UCM.
Best Regards and Stay Well,
Neil
Wow, quite the dissertation. There is some very useful stuff here. Pages 34-36 are very important. I can not fault his technique either. I still have an old bottle of Tergitol hanging around here somewhere. Where he falls short is the section on maintaining the cleanliness of records. That to me is the most important subject. The trick to clean records is, don't let them get dirty in the first place. No static, no exposure (or as little as possible), no dirt. |
@lewm, denatured ethanol has something like 5% methanol to make it POISONOUS so it can not be consumed, thus it is de-natured. It is a great polar solvent and could be used for cleaning records in that it will not damage the record but it might damage the label. It is the primary solvent for Shellac and doing a French Polish requires expertise in the use of denatured alcohol. This results in a spectacular finish but given the man-hours involved is rarely done any more. |
